Social Grooming

Using modern nonhuman primates as a model, Dunbar (1998, 1996) has argued that social grooming was an evolutionary precursor to speech in our species. Dunbar (1998:95) believes that there is a linear relationship between group size and the amount of time devoted to grooming among Old World monkeys and apes. According to the social grooming theory, ancestral hominids faced a dilemma (Dunbar 1998:96): while increased group size was being demanded by ecological pressures, time budget and energy constraints were preventing them from evolving these large groups.

Dunbar (ibid., 1996:121) states that language (gossip) was an effective solution because: 1) it allows more efficient use of time because an individual can ‘groom’ up to three individuals at the same time; and 2) it allows for the direct transfer of information that can be used to build and service relationships without the need for direct physical contact. According to Aitchison (1998: 21), neoteny, the extended childhood of humans, ties in with this grooming theory. She (ibid.) has proposed that soothing noises made to infants during this extended infancy probably encouraged vocal interaction at a time when vocal grooming was becoming widespread (ibid.). A related suggestion is that this type of nonhuman primate social behaviour has evolved into singing, music and dancing (Beaken 1996:103).

Dunbar (1996:150) suggests that Homo erectus would have employed as ‘sing-song’ vocal grooming rather than speech. He (ibid.) states that vocal grooming needs to be song-like if it is to provide the reinforcing mechanisms of opiate stimulation that make it pleasurable to be groomed. With the implementation of gossip, a different kind of benefit, social information would be introduced. The sounds used in gossip need not be to the same extent intrinsically pleasurable, provided relevant information is conveyed (Power 1998).

However, if grooming among nonhuman primates operates as a signal of commitment precisely because it is costly, then the relative ‘cheapness’ of vocal grooming would tend to undermines its value as an index of commitment (Power 1998:113). Language may enable modern humans to service three times as many relationships for the same amount of social effort as chimps can with manual grooming but the fact that you can chatter to three people at once reduces the indication of commitment to each grooming partner to a third (ibid.).

In modern humans, talking is socially oriented and has little to do with thoughts, and taps into the most superficial levels of language. According to Locke (1998:192), the dissociation between talking and language suggest that there are mechanisms that are specialized for sound making and talking. For example, human infants engage in sound making and talking long before they know that others have mental lives that differ from their own, and presumably are unaware that the talkers to whom they are exposed are exchanging information with arbitrary sounds.

Gesture

Communication starts when two or more individuals coordinate their separate activities to produce a single social act. The earliest version of communication takes the form of an iconic version of the joint activity, a gestural sign (Armstrong 1999; Hadar et. al. 1998; Studdert-Kennedy 1998; Lock 1978). The establishment of the sign in social life depends from the start on agreement between two or more individuals, a convention (Beaken 1996:60-61). This occurs when the response to the gesture is as important as the gesture itself. From initially iconic forms, a variety of forms can develop into arbitrary or conventional signs (ibid.). The context of general sign use is initially limited to a few social activities. Over time, more activities are organized with gesture, and something like grammatical forms start to develop. However, this does not imply that early hominids did not use sound in a variety of social functions. In general, gesture can be used in any situation where speech is not possible or permissible (Beaken 1996).

According to Englefield (1977:87), a gestural sign system can function with a small number of multifunctional iconic signs, however a functioning vocal language requires a large number of words to be learnt by all members of a group. Assuming that early hominids had a shorter learning time than modern humans, but longer than chimpanzees, this may have placed a limit on what could be acquired (ibid.). Beaken (1996:64) proposes that, in this situation, natural gestural signs would be easy to learn and to remember, and would “appear to be the original communication medium”.

Gestures are based on physical properties of the world (Bonvillian 1999; Nöth 1994). The meanings of natural gestures depend on the immediate context in which they are used (ibid.; Kendon 1989). Since interpretation depends on context, meaning is relatively easily recovered and the signer can use contextual features to elucidate meaning. Gesture meaning my be complex or simple, according to the situation. Since each gestural sign has a wide range of meanings, the load on memory is light, though ambiguity and misunderstanding may be frequent (Beaken 1996; Armstrong et. al. 1995, 1994). Gesture is possible at a distance and can also reach a large number of people at once, provided they are attentive. It is possible in noisy conditions and conditions requiring silence. Interestingly, there are still some things, today, that can be better expressed through gesture than speech: dimensions, shapes, directions and specifying objects/people in the immediate context.

Armstrong et. al. (1994:356) propose that the origins of syntax can be found in gesture. Gestures develop over time, as the signers analyze the gesture and gradually decompose it into separate semantic roles or meanings contained in the original sign. Rather than dividing language into two separate forms (spoken and gestured), Armstrong et. al. (1994:352) view spoken words as “complexes of temporally ordered muscular gestures.” They (Armstrong et. al. 1994:354) state that syntax “transformed naming into language by enhancing the ability of hominids to articulate and communicate complex thoughts.”

It is often that language developed through pointing, specifying objects and individuals, which leads eventually to naming them. It is also claimed that early language must have been dominated by actions, at the expense of attention to objects (Beaken 1996). Studies of child development indicate that children become aware of their own activity before they are aware of objects around them (Beaken 1996:69). Their first act of meaning is the action of pointing rather than reference to objects. It is the response of adults to this action, that learning of names proceeds (ibid.).

According to MacNeilage (1998:232), sign language may have gained an impetus from pantomiming acts that the hands themselves performed. He (ibid.) believes that the reasons usually given for sign being superseded by language (lack of omnidirectionality, lack of utility in the dark, inhibits other manual functions) are also reasons why it would not have gained preeminence in the first place. It has been proposed that gesture is more suitable for concrete notions, and speech for abstract (Armstrong 1999). However, abstract notions are not the result of the medium of speech, they are the result of a certain level of social and technical development. Modern deaf signing can cope quite well with abstract and general concepts.

Additionally, it has been proposed that the speed of processing of information is both faster and more efficient with vocal speech (Lieberman 1998). However, modern deaf signers are quite capable of translating spoken language into sign at the same pace of the speaker. This is possible because they are not processing distinct phonetic segments, but information contained in word meanings or propositions (Armstrong 1999; Beaken 1996). It is important to note that spoken language alone, today, is not adequate for all communication needs, as evidenced from our reliance the written word.

Gestural languages have a long history and widespread usage around the world. For example, the American Plains Indians developed a system of gestural language which served as a lingua franca between North American tribes over thousands of years (Skelly 1979). Kendon (1989) identified the widespread usage of gestural languages among Australian aboriginals. Luria and Vygotsky (1992) suggest that every foraging society used both gestural and spoken languages. Within the context of language origins, it is not necessary to promote spoken language over manual language. The mere fact that the human brain is capable of processing both types of language, through similar yet very different means, provides a clue as to the evolution of language. Since sign/gestural languages do not rely upon Chomskian grammatical rules, it seems as though the main impetus for language development was the expression of contextual information.